Help:Tips from Leonardo - how to share your ideas safely
While sharing your ideas with others may be a wonderful thing, it may also pose some risks to yourself and others. As the quote above demonstrates, this dilemma indeed bothered Leonardo Da Vinci. Because Leonardo's working method was based on actually doing things, he could not really keep much of his visionary ideas to himself, so he probably always had to consider the problem of what, how and when to reveal. This help page is an attempt to understand how Leonardo handled the issue of safe sharing and what we can learn from it, that might help modern innovators. Short term protection A well known fact is, that Leonardo made some small, easy to detect design flaws in the drawings of some of his inventions. "Easy to detect" means that anyone with an appropriate technical background that would try to build the device from the drawings, may easily detect the mistakes and understand how to fix them. A good example is Leonardo's design of an armored military vehicle (or a "tank"), in which the gears are drawn in a way that wouldn't work, but it is very easy to understand why and fix the error. It is quite obvious that someone with a technical ingenuity as Leonardo's, would not make this kind of design errors unless he intended to, so the question is, what purpose did they serve for Leonardo? The answer might be found in the fact that like many Renaissance artists, Leonardo was dependent on his sponsors to make a living. It might be that in some cases, he wanted inventions he had to make for them fail in demonstration. The tricky thing about Leonardo's design flaws is that they could only be discovered and fixed if the device or machine was actually built and tested. This means that whoever ordered the work, or perhaps other people who might have wanted to copy Leonardo's designs would have to go trough all the bother of building and testing the invention, and then trying to figure out why it is not working, while only the inventor who made the original design could avoid going trough all that bother. Thus, entering small but critical mistakes in the designs, enabled Leonardo to get funding for putting his ideas into practice, while still maintaining control over the way they will be actually used. The flawed machines where still functional enough tough, to serve as a proof of concept for many aspects of their design - and since in Leonardo's mind, all his ideas where interconnected, that may have been enough for him in many cases. Secrets hidden in lacking reasoning Among all his other talents, Leonardo Da Vinci was probably the greatest painter of human faces ever. We know that much of his technique was based on a careful study of the proportions of the human body in general and of faces in particular. Along with other Renaissance artists, Leonardo helped establishing the mathematical principles of aesthetic issues such as symmetry and proportion. Still, when we look at the vast gallery of human faces in Leonardo's paintings, we have to admire their realistic and life-like look, full of all kinds of human imperfections and certainly not the result of pure mathematical rules. It is likely that Leonardo used his understanding of ideal proportions as some kind of a standard scale by which he measured and captured facial features, but how exactly he was able to use that to paint the mysterious smile of the Mona Lisa, is something that he of course did not reveal. We can see the same principle repeating in many of his works and studies. Leonardo did not mind that his methods will be known to others, but how exactly he used them in a way that goes beyond the dry facts - that he kept for himself. Failing to provide exact reasoning, is very typical of innovative processes like the one that Leonardo followed in his work. This is because insightful ideas are an emergent outcome of the innovator's observation skills. As a side effect, the innovator gains some additional protection from copycats and people with bad intentions, but perhaps there is another risk that is avoided in this way. Both science and art, advance in many cases trough inspiration. Acting in the Renaissance, in which free sharing and debating of ideas was an important part of the the cultural atmosphere, Leonardo must have been very aware of that. He knew that just as many of his ideas where inspired by other ideas of himself, yet other ideas of him where inspired by those of other people, and that of course he inspired others as well. Providing too many facts and reasoning, not leaving enough to other people's thinking and imagination, may be very harmful to the process of inspiration. In other words, if you want your creations to last, not only by themselves but as lessons and sources of inspiration to others, remaining somewhat obscure can serve you very well. Learn to fly 200px|left Be on the move. Get something actually done and move to the next thing. Document your thoughts with the intention of keeping track of them so that you can return. By the time others will figure out what you are up to, you have flown away. Leonardo's fascination with birds and flight, went far beyond mere scientific interest in aeronautics. He really wanted to be like the birds. To free himself from the restrictions of gravity and be able to take off whenever he wanted. He lived and thought like a nomad, and always knew when it was the time to leave. "Learn to fly" is a good advice for anyone with an innovative mind. Care about your innovations but don't get too attached to the objects they become into. While making your ideas real is an important part of the creative process, it is the process as a whole, and the way it enables you to grow as a human being that really matters. Unlike with conventional R&D processes, which are so complex and expansive that it requires 20 years of exclusive patent rights to cover for their costs, Innovation in the Da Vinci way, is lightweight and airborne. Learn to keep an open mind and follow the wind and the weather changes. There is safety in following the unknown, and a promise for a better way to collaborate with others, rather than cloaking yourself in secrecy.